What would happen if two lucky blocks in a row were found by honest nodes in less than the 10 minute average?  At that point, wouldn't the honest network be working on a new block 5 while the attacker is still trying to build a block 4 to attach to his alternate block 3?  Wouldn't then the chain split favor the honest network and put mr 51% on his ass for a round, forcing him to reset and restart his attack with honest block 5?

It was about 1997 or so.  I was finishing up my contract in the USMC in the active reserves.  I was out of a communications company stationed in Cincinnati, Ohio.  When summertime came and we were scheduled to head to Camp Penalton, California for our "two weeks" (more like three, usually) C130 transports were not available for some strange reason.  So a 737, I believe owned by Delta IIRC, was chartered for our trip out to Cali.  We arrived in full gear as if we were leaving for war, which is how we went anywhere, at the Cincinnati International Airport around 3am.  We walked single file straight off the trucks & busses, right through the metal detectors (while the agent stood by and watched as his panel kept beeping, loudly) without a single one of us saying a word.  There was only one or two families in that wing of the airport at that time of night, and I recall walking past a family sitting on a bench watching us as a little girl about seven was wide eyed and mouth open staring.  They must have thought we really were headed to war.

We were entirely seated in the aircraft when the Captain (of the aircraft) started pitching a fit and ordered us all off the aircraft.  "Get off my plane and unload those rifles!"  So we calmly filed back off, unloaded our magazines from our M16A2's and walked back onto the aircraft with our bolts pulled back so that the Captain himself could see down into our chambers and know that there were no rounds loaded.  When we all got on and seated, we were ordered (in no uncertain terms) by the Captain (over the plane's intercom) to hang our rifles muzzle down on the back of the seat in front of us, and no magazines shall leave our packs much less come anywhere near a rifle.

So, for a few minutes, I was calmly seated onto a commercial aircraft with a loaded "assault rifle", although I was properly in Condition 3.  Can't speak for any of the other rockheads I was on that aircraft with, however.

I have no doubt that the Captain of that aircraft was former military, either.

The way I understood it, an attacker with only a simple majority could only prevent transactions from being included in new blocks by creating the blocks himself without transactions, but even that wouldn't be certain as every once in a while an honest miner is still going to get a lucky block in faster than a 1% advantage can deal with.  Also, that 1% advantage might (theorically) permit the attacker to reverse one previous block, if he's lucky, but blocks beyond that one require orders of magnitude more hashing power than all of the honest nodes combined.  The 6 was chosen specificly because it would take a rediculous multiple of the hashing power of the whole of the honest network.

An attacker with only 51% of the total hashing power could double-spend (or simply reverse) just confirmed transactions that he, himself, just spent; but still wouldn't be able to reverse the transactions of other peoples' bitcoins, only delay them from confirmations for as long as he could maintain the attack.  But even with 51% of the hashing power, 6 confirmations is safe.

The second would be considered invalid, and simply ignored by most peers & miners.  It wouldn't even propagate past a full client.

I'd bet that I'm the only person in this thread that has ever openly carried a loaded firearm onto a commercial aircraft. 

Your opinion isn't statistically significant, either.

No.  You've read me all wrong here.  I was just pointing out that those data sets aren't reallly directly comparable.

Again, no.  I wasn't arguing for or against mass shootings as representative of gun issues.


I said that data was statisticly insignificant, not that it didn't count.  Keep putting words in my mouth, First Accent, and our congenial conversations are going to turn dark quick.

Why?  Is there some reason that the script couldn't check the MtGox spot price when called and do the math right then?

And no, more data does not equal to less bias.  Wikipedia is limiting itself to 'rampages' or 'mass killings' wherein one nutter goes off and starts shooting multiple people with whom s/he has no prior contact.  The Brady Campaign includes a great deal of events that involved crimes of passion, career criminals with guns, organized crime, inter-famililar violence (such as spouse abuse), etc.  In other words, they include a great deal of data on events that had causes/triggers having little or nothing to do with whether or not guns were used as the means to the end.  Nor do they bother to gather the same data on such events that did not include a firearm.  Again, the weapon is just a tool with a deliberate purpose.  The most successful career muggers are almost invariablely those who use weapons other than a firearm within juristictions that make it difficult for an average citizen to carry a firearm.  Usually knives.  Ironically, we even have the effects of such events in US law, as it's illegal to import, manufacture or sell a knife that is intended to be opened with a single action; thus switchblades & 'butterfly' knives are banned in the US.  I'm still waiting for the one armed war vet to sue for discrimination.  They didn't blame the criminal element for using the best tools (in this case, switchblades & butterfly knives) available to them for their crimes, they again blamed the manufacturers of such tools for making their products too easy to use.

Not me, I've no interest in trying to prove any such thing.  I think that whether or not a armed population limits rampages or not is statistically insignificant overall, even though I'll admit up front that my own life's experiences bias myself toward believeing that mykerl is correct.  I don't think that the practical argument is what really matters, as the results in either direction are not significant enough to overcome the predispositions on either side; as both yourself and myself are evidence of.

My argument is more basic.  Self defense is a basic human right, and if I, as an average citizen, are denied access to the most effective forms of defense that I can afford by any reason whatever, then my basic human right has been infringed.  Sure, I'm still responsible for what I do with those tools, but they are just tools.  If I never need to use it, then it's still worked for me; but if I should be so unlucky as to have to use a weapon in my own defense, I'm okay with being required to justify my actions to an impartial jury.  But not one that is predisposed to beleive that the mere act of ownership of a tool is criminal, regardless of it's design characteristics.

That Silver Circle movie seems like something I might be willing to contribute towards, but they don't take Bitcoins it seems.  Which is kind of strange, since they are obviously fine with taking US $.

Now that's a bias fail.  The Brady Campaign isn't exactly a neutral data source, and one known for huge cherry picking of data sets in their own right. 

Perhaps he is biased in his data choices, and simply is not aware of it.  That's not intellectually dishonest, just normal bias.  We all have bias, expecially journalists.  So rather than argue that his data is cherry picked (which it certainly is, but not necessarily with an intent towards biasing the data set) why don't you run down that list of rampages that he provided for you (from Wikipedia, not exactly a source known to pick sides) and do the average for the entire thing and let's see what the whole data set says.

Perhaps, but you do save.  If the bitcoin trade volume never amount to much, you've lost nothing for trying it; however, if the trade volume justifies a lower cost method, you'll be motivated to make it happen at that point even if no one already has. 

Still, I'd wager that, now that the developers know that there needs to be a plug-in for 3Dcart, it won't be long before you have what you need.

PM me your address, please; and I'll send one out next chance I get.

You need to grow thicker skin, or consider hitting that ignore button to the left.  You don't have a right to not be offended.

My kids had fitted cloth diapers, hand made in Canada.  They weren't cheap, either.

The overall cost was cheaper though.


I've never owned more than one television at a time, although my current one does have a screen the size of Yorkshire.  It also only uses 70 watts to do much more than what used to take 450 watts, so I'm okay with that.


I've never had a newspaper subscription, and I've never known a Millinial who did either, whether they were inclined to be green or not.


Those are still made, BTW.  I've got two of them.  They actuall cost more than a cheap gas push mower, but last a decade longer at least.


I have a Trek 7.1 that I commute 8 miles each way one whenever I can.  I did it exclusively for 3 years from May of 2008 to Aug. 2011; and I've had other jobs in the past that I commuted by bike too.  Over my working adult life, I'd say I've owened a car to commute with a bit over half the time.  Not owning the car at all is the money saver, as most of the costs of a car are maintaince & insurance, not fuel.


They don't really come from the other side of the world, they come from a small bottling factory with an industrial reverse osmosis unit in your downtown district.  It's tap water, just read the label.


This one's bullshit.  Very few people reused pens or razors unless they had too.


You meet some really interesting people on public transit


That changed for valid code & human safety reasons, not because people had more things to plug in.


Wow, total ignorance about how cell phones work.  The only signal beamed from space is GPS, and every bit of that is solar powered.


You guys would do well to take this one to heart.

It's also not true, at least not in any practial sense.  In my own experience, those who "wish to be green" and are willing to use government to compell others to also do as they would wish are religious zealots, not scientists.  They, as a rule, are impervious to new facts or data that may not have been available (or not widely available) at the time of their religious conversion.  I'm no less committed to the environment than I ever have been, I've just come to the conclusion that most of the actions that are proposed by the Green movement are ineffective at best, and terriblely counterproductive otherwise.  Even one of the founders of Greenpeace has done an about face concerning civil nuclear power, and nuclear power was one of the scientific issues that started me down my alternate path.  I love watching "Stossel" on Fox Business Network each thursday, and this past one had a bit on the EPA that I agree with compeletly.  Stossel (himself a well known former liberal turned libertarian) stated the issue well for myself, by saying that when the EPA was founded, there was much need for it, but since all of the low hanging fruit has been dealt with over the past 40 years, all remaining gains are economicly very costly and thus result in job losses.  I also agree with his libertarian position that, although it's true that in a libertarian world the public could class action sue major industrial polluters, in practice our justice system is too screwed up for that to be a practial solution.  Thus the EPA must continue to exist as a reflection of our society's collective desire to restrict pollution to the economicly necessary minimum possible but no further.  My greatest complaint about the EPA is that they have no authority over the greatest pollutors within the USA, namely government institutions themselves (particularly the US Military), so further gains from federal actions cannot be expected.